


Fealty

by Bryn Lantry (Bryn)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1990-01-01
Updated: 1990-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 14:16:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/394774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bryn/pseuds/Bryn%20Lantry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Avon has killed Blake and comes to the planet of Blake's clone</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fealty

**Author's Note:**

> Printed in the zine 'Resistance 4', 1990  
> Here kicking and screaming because Sally likes it.

##  
#

In me thou didst exist – and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.

Edgar Allan Poe

#  
#

The bed was sweltering from three hours together, snatched in the overlap of their offwatches. This was the sixth time – Blake was counting, in the hope that the number would give him a sense of progress. Enigmatic Avon's dark beauty had piqued him for a year. One might think overthrowing the Federation was ambition enough. But no, Blake had allowed that beauty to become another ambition – just when he ought to be disciplining his senses in pursuit of his political objectives. Well, he was thirty-four, he'd recently escaped from tranquillisation and surveillance, and the need smote him badly. Now those marvelous brown eyes, the handsome lines of that face, were his to enjoy. Yet, there was no progress. When not actually engaged in sex, Avon remained nasty and aloof. Blake thought that unnatural.

“You're on watch in half an hour,” observed a drowsy Avon.

Coffee-coloured hair ended at Blake's eye level. Playing their provocative game, he kissed the nape of the creamy neck. “Liked that, then, did you?”

Avon answered in his elegantly sarcastic drawl. “I've confessed already, Blake. Our liaison is good. As it happens.”

“Good.” Blake mulled the word over. “I ought to ask you as it happens, and see if you can't find a heartier adjective.”

“As you are perfectly aware, I couldn't find my tongue, much less an adjective – as it happens. Which seems to suggest you have nothing to complain of.”

That would be true, if erotic enthusiasm were the issue. Avon had an extreme nature, and once seduced was in deadly earnest. For this among several reasons – few of which Blake minded – he was the very devil to sleep with. One of those things Blake did mind was the cynical levity with which Avon treated passion in passion's absence.

“Actually,” whispered Blake slyly into his neck, “you did find your tongue. Though you may not have noticed.”

“Indeed? Do tell. What nonsensical phrase did you wring from me?”

Mocking bastard, Blake thought with affection. “I wouldn't like to embarrass you.”

“Forgive me if I doubt that sentiment. I have obviously called your bluff.” Catlike, Avon stretched indolently against Blake, still ringed by his arm. Blake smiled in the simple delight of him. “Well, then, Blake, how about you tell me your adjective?”

Here, Blake had a policy of honesty. “I'm a slightly shellshocked rebel, aging fast, whose love life was pharmaceutically terminated for four years. I believe in miracles.”

“I believe in physiological processes, but I'm glad you liked it.”

Despite Avon's lack of reverence for sex, bed was where to talk to him most effectively. Blake was in the mood to push his luck. “Besides, I like the opportunity to strengthen our fealty.”

“Fealty, Blake?” The smirk was audible. “Somewhat medieval, don't you think? I see you're really after a feudal vassal.”

“Fealty means a faith between people. Fundamental, and lasting. An allegiance, yes. I know I have fealty towards you.” Blake had planned this speech. Fealty sounded such a steadfast word. Less revocable than any other – friendship, love. Those words Avon refused to qualify for, but Blake had noticed in him a streak of peculiar loyalty.

“Such concepts have no relation to sex, Blake. Allegiances or otherwise are a matter for the flight deck.”

“Is what happens here inconsequential on the flight deck?”

“Blake.” The brown head tossed restlessly. “The facts are these. I am half perverse. You are perverse in a complementary manner, which is expedient for me, and I trust for you. There end the facts, Blake.”

About desire, Avon was puritanical and unrepentant. He knew erotic activity with another man was a deviation the way he knew larceny was a crime, and he practiced both with wicked nonchalance.

“Perversity suits you,” Blake told him.

“Your liberal notions are also inconsequential. I know what I am, I know what we have, and I know where your argument is leading.”

“Where, Avon?'

“You're never content, Blake. You need to see more in existence than there actually is. A sensible man in your position would have exploited his engineering education, legally or illegally. Likewise he would exploit his biological functions, naturally or unnaturally. You, instead, become a poor but honest crusader. And pleasure to you is no more a sufficient end that profit. If you want a sentimental affair, you should be in Jenna's cabin.”

Blake's heart muscles seemed to twist. “But Avon, you've had at least one – emotional affair.”

Avon said hollowly, “That was with a woman.”

#

Must be the bleakest bit of country on the damn planet, thought Blake. A murky green tarn among bald hills, mournfully cawing birds and a wind rattling the cottage. If he stayed here many more weeks he might jump in the tarn from depression. Maybe he should go itinerant, be a tramp with a knapsack and itching feet. He had to find some obsessive pastime or other. Staring into tarns wouldn't do, and the vegetable patch was of minimal fascination in winter.

For the fiftieth time Blake read the script etched lopsidedly over the cottage door:

_A jug of wine, a book of verse, and thou –_ _  
Ah, wilderness were paradise enow._

There was indeed wine, after a fashion – a wicked brew fermented from berries. Twice or thrice Blake had experimented with the theorem, and found that a substantial number of jugs of wine were necessary before wilderness resembled any kind of paradise for him. Well, the _thou_ was missing from the recipe. Never again would he have one of those, not after the last time. Anyway, he was almost over the hill – when last he held converse with a mirror, he'd noticed a grey curl lurking in the undergrowth. That was a while ago. Not much point keeping check on what havoc time was wreaking, while you were the sole creature with aesthetic sensibilities on the planet. If he forgot he was tumbling fast for forty, no-one else in the universe would remember. For one thing, the universe thought Blake dead. Occasionally Blake was of the universe's opinion.

Rooks wheeled in the grey sky. Blake had taken up ornithology, so far as watch their comings and goings with the fondness one couldn't withhold from the friendliest beings in a light year. This afternoon, he noted, the birds were spooked, screaming raucously.

Then he saw a bright fleck falling in an even line through the clouds. Ship, he thought in amazement, and swore some choice oaths he'd learnt on Jevron. Rough planet, Jevron, and at the time he'd been of a mind to roughen up his image.

Monitoring the landing with his eye, he estimated the vessel was down only a mile away. Which was either a madly improbable chance, or the pilot had some fancy life-detection equipment. Whoever it was, Blake didn't appreciate the company. Couldn't a truant from the post of galactic hero maroon himself in peace?

Fetching his weapon from the cottage, Blake stuffed the control box into the skin pouch hanging from his belt, and slung the marker in a thong over his shoulder. Grimly, he began the hike to the ship, there to scare the trespassers from his planet. Blake had contracted a severe allergy to the humanoid races.

Half a mile on, he scrambled fast up a steep hillside – at least going feral battered one into good shape – and crouched amongst the granite, squinting ahead. What he saw made him bare his teeth, more like a feral dog than a feral human. He never mistook a pursuit ship. The design had been streamlined since Liberator days, but to Blake they always looked the same – toadlike little monsters. But how on Spartacus did the Federation ferret him out? Sleer was dead, and wasn't likely to have told anyone the tale of her double-dealing here before the Andromedan War. This was a nowhere world, officially nameless, ignored for a quarter of a century.

On the wind-buffeted moor between the ship and him, walked a single thin figure in black. Troopers' colour, but no helmet. Not liking this one bit, Blake waited where he was.

When the figure was slowly picking a path up his hill, Blake went horribly cold from scalp to feet. “Fortune, don't do this to me,” he muttered.

Unslinging the marking gun, Blake climbed, as professionally as he stalked animals, until he was to the rear of the intruder. He leapt from a stone crevice onto braced legs, gun-muzzle to the ground, the control box high in his spare hand.

Avon swivelled – still snake-quick. Extraordinarily, though, there was no weapon apparent about weathered black and silver suit. His wan face was gauntly beautiful now, instead of sleekly beautiful.

Handsome is as handsome does, Blake reminded himself, and smiled austerely. “You're marked, if you recall.”

Avon's eyes travelled to the control box. Actually, Blake had changed the signal's frequency, to avoid committing suicide the first time he shot something – which meant Avon was safe too. But Avon wouldn't even wonder if the weapon was double-edged, because Avon was mistaking him for someone else.

A tongue smudged dry lips. “You know me, then?”

“We met – some years ago.”

Avon nodded – as sinewy and suspicious as a snake, too. “When my colleagues and I teleported you some food supplies. I see you've been guarding Imipac.”

“And my planet. Your ship bears Federation insignia.”

“I stole it on a colony called Gauda Prime. An unfortunate choice of transport – perhaps.”

Blake asked, “Why are you here?”

“To see you.”

Well, Avon had been doing damn all else – he stared like a charmed snake, to pursue the dreadfully apt metaphor. But Blake supposed himself a right sight, at that. His curls would be a hazard to his vision in another week, though the anti-beard agent he'd last daubed on when in civilization was still working. As for the fashions of Spartacus, he'd hung onto a grubby shirt, but his trousers and vest were stitched together from animal hide. All in all, he obviously hadn't been expecting an old sweetheart. Not that an old sweetheart had arrived. Avon was always more the sour kind.

“You'd better come along to my cottage,” he said. “It's the only decent habitation on the continent.”

“Thank you,” answered Avon, monotonally polite. He paused. “I've no idea what to address you as.”

“What do you address my original as.”

Avon jerked his head oddly as he said, “Blake.”

“Then I'm Roj.” Pocketing the control box, Blake strode ahead of Avon, down the dreary granite hill. Repeating his journey, he was surprised to notice a few tender shoots in the black earth. Seasons, he reminded himself. Winter wasn't a permanent state, not even here.

#

His guest stopped to read the motto over the door, and to smile twistedly.

“Rashel liked poetry,” explained Blake.

“Ah, your companion.” Avon sounded covert. “Past tense?”

“She's dead.” Actually, Blake had ferried the widow to a nearby farming world. He hoped she was thriving.

Avon mentioned, “Likewise your original.”

“How?”

“Misadventure.” With a dark glance, Avon crossed the threshold.

_And thou_ , thought Blake, wryly. He followed.

The cottage was a single room, hewn of red timber, with three glass windows. There was a primitive woodstove and chimney, small table and bed, shelves for food and paper books – a few of which Rashel had salvaged from the abandoned settlement, the others being Blake's favourite pre-Federation classics. Propped in a corner was a lute-like instrument, upon which Blake was learning to pluck away his evenings. In another stood a spinning-wheel, which he hadn't yet braved. Candles stuck everywhere from brackets.

“Has its charm,” said Blake, believing so again. “Hungry? I've a stew that only needs warming. Mind you, the vegetables are thin on flavour this time of year. They're genuine, though. Care for a jug of wine?” Speaking for himself, Blake had rarely been in such need of a slug of alcohol. He was in danger of becoming a drunk and disillusioned rebel, but this was not the time to reform his character.

“Thank you,” said Avon again, and perched on a stool – in the vigilant way a vulture perches, thought Blake. Still, he's never thanked so often in his life. Blake poured two mugs of blinding berry juice, pitch-black and lovely, like the shadowed eyes of his guest. He gulped heartily.

Avon's verdict was a delicate grimace. Cocking his head, he chanted to Blake, “A jug of wine, a book of verse, and him – it doesn't precisely rhyme, does it?”

The fellow was in a bad way, Blake saw. Gaze a bit too glassy. Fatigue shock, no doubt. Since stealing his ship, he must have had a tough few months. Like Blake. “And wilderness were grim,” he answered, being the authority.

Avon stared absently on. Eventually he returned to his wine.

Hell, thought Blake, and busied himself about the stove. What's eating him? Guilty conscience? Forgive me if I doubt the sentiment.

Whatever Avon had done, he looked half-starved. “Best stew on Spartacus,” Blake announced, presenting him with a bowl.

“Spartacus?”

“Ancient Roman who led a slave revolt.”

“Ah, yes. One of your original's spiritual ancestors.”

“Rashel chose the name. She was a slave once.”

Avon inspected the steaming stew. “Spartacus was crucified, of course.”

“Better that than die in a gladiator's arena for the entertainment of your owners,” countered Blake, who had learnt such stories by heart when a boy.

“Sometimes you remind me of a rebel I once knew.” Avon smiled with a terrible irony.

Blake pondered him. Neat white teeth, a new hollowness about his eyes – so he was older too – a singed rip in his rather alarming studded leather. “You came simply to see me?” he asked.

The smile switched off. “I came to take you away.”

Disarming, Blake thought. “Take me where?”

“Wherever I go. My ship needs a crew of two. I can teach you piloting. There's nothing for you here.”

“I might be fond of my cottage.”

“I might persuade you.”

“You're prepared to fly with the replica of a dead friend?”

“Yes. You'll receive the proper salary.”

Blake almost laughed. “I'll consider your offer of employment,” he promised. “Meantime, I've got a bit of wood to chop before dark.” He left for the woodpile, seeing that Avon wasn't likely to remember to eat his stew otherwise.

#

Hospitably leaving the bed for his guest, Blake was sleeping under the table. “Won't be the first time,” he'd grinned. When he woke to the gloom of a single candle, however, Avon was standing at the window, that costume of his still securely fastened from neck to boots. Blake wondered if he'd traded in his skin for black cloth. Shame, he had damn nice skin. Wrapped in his blanket, Blake wriggled out to drink some rainwater.

“I told you to use the bed,” said Avon. “I'm an insomniac.”

Blake hitched himself up onto the table. Candlelight, he noticed, brought a soft gold sheen to Avon's rich coffee hair and eyes.

Avon said, “My complaint needn't ruin your sleep too.”

Remembering his clone's catchphrase, Blake said innocently, “All life is linked.”

“So are some deaths. For six months I thought I'd foiled my own prophecy.” Avon smiled. “Until I came to look at his living image. You're more than that. Everything worthwhile I ever was, I can see in you. And I never see those things in a mirror. So I did die with him. Essentially, I mean.”

Blake was glad the cottage was dim.

“I'll keep you safe,” Avon guaranteed. “You're a relic.” Approaching Blake, he ran a proprietorial finger down the curve of his cheek. The finger hesitated at his jawbone, idling furtively there. Then it caressed further, along Blake's throat, to the blanket cloaking him. “Roj. You must miss your companion.” Blake hadn't forgotten that purr, which always gave away Avon's fits of amorousness. “What I can offer may be peculiar, but isn't bad. In fact, your original preferred this way of doing things.”

“With you?” asked Blake.

“Yes. He was – my lover. Although I never informed him of the fact.”

“What did you inform him?”

Avon sounded matter-of-fact. “That he was unnatural and sentimental for being the one human being who might have cared for me personally.”

Slowly, Blake gathered the man to his breast.

“You mean you will?” asked Avon.

Eyes shut, Blake nodded against his shoulder. “I like you,” he explained, rather thickly.

“Well. Good. You can't imagine how I like you. Can we commence, Roj?” Avon removed his jacket.

Crazier and crazier, Blake thought. But his blood was a roar after three years' absence from Avon. He never had got around to settling for anybody else, either. No point – none of his earlier indiscretions rivalled that tormented, sensuous little satyr named Kerr Avon, after whom you always needed a double whiskey. Smiling, he remembered their three-hour romps, when with semi-sadistic slowness he would erase the misgivings from Avon's mind.

Here was Avon, two-thirds stripped and counting, watching Blake's anatomy meanwhile with eyes of misery and smothering heat. Ditching his blanket, Blake waited in the cold bed.

“I wonder how identically clones behave,” said Avon.

“I'm simply a biological copy.”

“That will be nice. His biology was the bit I liked best.” Naked, Avon gleamed in the candlelight – as exhibitionist now as, half an hour ago, he'd been prudish. “For example, are you partial to whiskey before sleeping, Robin Hood clothes or tinkering uselessly with machinery?”

“I've no doubt I would be.”

“Ah. Then have you any lubricant?”

He's grown bolder, Blake thought. I hope no-one's been curing his awkwardness. “That jar near the chimney is what I use to soften the lute strings.”

“Better you than me,” commented Avon, fetching the jar. And he smiled.

I don't think my clone could have coped with him, thought Blake. Well, he didn't cope, of course. I'm about to make love to a cold-blooded snake. But he doesn't hate me. Maybe he never hated me, not even at Star One. Maybe by then I was made paranoid by the stifled love he refused to hear of.

“You look miles away,” said Avon.

“I'm here, I promise you.”

“You're not, and neither am I.” Avon pushed him flat, and tossed aside the blankets. A hand fell on Blake's thigh, as Avon merely looked, most of his changed, bleaker face hidden in darkness. That must have lasted five minutes. Swallowing – Blake saw his throat's shadow twitch on the wall – he caught Blake's penis and worked in the ointment as though he were greasing an engine component.

“Won't you kiss me?” asked Blake.

“No.” The fingers persisted, and Avon looked nowhere else. His expression was stony, but over his cheekbones was the rosy tint that came with desire.

Sweat prickled on Blake's skin. “Please kiss me.”

“Fast, Roj, and without fuss,” Avon instructed, and flung himself, with something resembling a theatrical gesture of grief, on his face.

Dazed with that assault, amused and troubled, Blake studied the arms wrapping Avon's brown head. That's ridiculous, sweetheart, he thought.

Blake caressed a taut thigh and calf, admiring their muscular grace. He smiled to see Avon's toes dig into the mattress. Leaning down, Blake gently bit his rump.

Quiet though Avon was, anything sentient could have sensed his shock. Fine. Blake kept biting, rolling in between his friend's legs and smoothing them against his body. Damned if I won't kiss you, he thought, and did, in the soft surrounds of his hipbones. Then he nipped a trail down Avon's warm cleft.

To Blake's delight, a hand knotted in his curls as his tongue discovered skin that became more and more tender. The grip stayed, tight and still, when his travellings culminated.

When Blake rose, Avon twisted over to seize his hips in damp thighs. His secretive, dark eyes were lava-hot – like the honeyed well into which Blake pushed himself.

Avon yelled, his head jerking back. Rapt in the man's face, Blake pressured further into that glory. To stop was impossible, until the tight torridity of Avon's lovemaking had swallowed him whole.

“I told you fast,” hissed Avon, after some time in a limbo of pure content. Blake focused on a handsome, wild grin, and being in an endlessly obliging mood, did whatever Avon said. Except he was careful, knowing Avon had never made much of a habit of this, prior to him.

Avon liked to come with him – or more accurately, did whether he liked to or not. This time, Blake was determined, he would like to. He kissed Avon's dark-thatched chest while he slowed or quickened in obedience to the legs tangled about him. Avon bruised his shoulders and pulled his hair, and Blake never minded anything less. In a spit-wetted hand he rolled Avon's neat, jutting cock, trying to convey his affection in his touch. Avon wrenched himself up mostly by Blake's curls, clamped their mouths together, and came. The same sweetness ripped through Blake.

Lying with a warm, heavy heap of beloved flesh in his arms, Blake dreamt they were on the Liberator again, forgetting his grey curl and Avon's hollow eyes. But in those days Avon had never clutched him for dear sanity like this.

Avon whispered, “You are Blake, aren't you?”

“I'm sorry, Avon.”

“You know what happened on Gauda Prime.”

“I saw the vidcast. Then I came here.”

“I thought you'd betrayed me.”

“I see.”

“And that was your clone.”

“Some rebels kidnapped him and passed him off as me. I haven't done much resisting since Star One. I believe the phrase is loss of faith.”

“Which means fealty,” said Avon. Then he gave a harsh sob into Blake's neck.

His crying was horrible to hear. Blake listened with closed eyes, hand softly sifting his hair. When silence returned, Blake said, “We might stay here for a while, Kerr. Spring's coming. Wilderness were paradise enow. Rashel tells us so.”

“Well, she had a Blake clone,” rasped Avon. “He was probably good in bed too.”

Blake bit his lip. “At least tell me you love me for my biology.”

“I love you for your biology,” Avon rapped out. He sneaked a hard kiss under Blake's ear. “Satisfied?”

Blake smiled.

###  
###


End file.
